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I am so leary of the oils in cocobolo that I want to use the allwood epoxy from lmi but cleanup would be a nightmare. What would you guys use to glue down a cocobolo bridge to a cedar top and not worry about it comming off?

Whatever you usually use--hide glue or aliphatic resin (preferably lmi's). Just scrape a fresh surface within a few minutes of gluing.

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Howard Klepper
http://www.klepperguitars.com

When all else fails, clean the shop.

I use Titebond and lightly sand the bottom of the bridge with 80grit right before gluing. I glued cocobolo bridges on redwood tops without failure (so far…).

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Laurent Brondel
West Paris, Maine - USA
http://www.laurentbrondel.com/

Does no one wipe down w/ acetone first?
(I've got one of these coming along too...)

Steve

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From Nacogdoches...the oldest town in Texas.

http://www.stephenkinnaird.com

You guys have convinced me. I will scrape/or sand the surface a few minutes before applying the glue and go with LMI white.
Incidently, I am impressed with how rapidly the color of freshly sanded cocobolo changes from bright orange to a more purple color. It only takes a few minutes with this piece that the bridge is made from

I've used fish glue of late on cocobolo bridges, to both spruce and redwood, and it has worked good. I didn't use acetone, just scraped it first. I did have a cocobolo bridge pull up on a spruce top after 2 years using titebond, I re-glued it approx 8 months ago with fish glue and everything is good-to-go now. I also did some test glue-ups using coco to spruce and redwood....glued with West Epoxy, Titebond, and fish glue.....though none of them was perfect, in my experiment the fish glue provided the best adhesion (lots of spruce and redwood pulled up upon seperating the joints) so that's what I use now.

One thing about fish glue though is it is a pain to clean up, I mean a real PITA.

Greg

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Gwaltney Guitars

where do you get fish glue and is it a heated glue like hide?

Lee Valley has it, or you can buy gallons directly from Norland. No heat, long open time (5 minutes or so after spreading), good, fast initial tack, works for rubbed joints fine, but it does take 12 hours to cure. Clean up requires damp rag, or paper towel. Does not make boogers like HHG. If you wait and scrape after dry, it is tough, because the stuff is hard as glass, but it will scrape or sand off. If it gets too dry before you glue, you can just moisten the joint a little, and the tack will return.

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

Collings Guitars quit making guitars with Cedar tops because the oils in the wood caused too many bridges to pull up.

Of course they're using Tightbond for everything so that's probably a lot of the reason. I wonder why they wouldn't just use an alternative for the Cedar tops so they could keep using them? Or better yet, why they wouldn't use an alternative for all of their tops.

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Thanks,
Blain

http://www.ullrichguitar.com

"89.67% of all statistics are made up on the spot."

I had an ebony bridge pull off with titebond. I replaced it with epxoy (englemann). Since, i have used epoxy with good results on rosewood and ebony. I have used acetone to clean the bridge but not on the spruce top.

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Greg
http://garibaldiinstruments.com/

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